She crossed her legs, flinched a little bit with her eyes, and said, “I don’t think I want to go there after all. I’ve changed my mind.” With the slightest shrug of her shoulders, she added, “Don’t be mad at me.”
Perhaps there had been a time in my career when I might have found her display of world-class denial the slightest bit endearing, but if there had been, I was definitely past it.
“Yes?” I said.
That’s what I said out loud, anyway. Inside, I was screaming things like“What the hell are you talking about? Are you crazy? You just said the man would kill you!”
But was I surprised at her change of heart?
Hardly. A colleague who spent much of her time treating abused spouses once told me that battered women had to leave their husbands five times before they stopped being drawn back. In her world, the sixth separation was the magic one.
Usually, anyway. She’d reminded me that she’d once treated a woman who went back eleven times.
Eleven. And anyone who’d been in practice doing psychotherapy for a while had treated abused women who never considered leaving even once.
As far as I knew, Gibbs was one of those. She hadn’t left Sterling even once. This morning’s short trip to Boulder ’s Safe House was going to be their virgin marital separation.
“You’re concerned that I’ll be angry with you?” I kept my voice as mild as the shampoo that I used to bathe my daughter’s silky hair. I was already past my reactive anger and back in the shallows of the sea of compassion for the constellation of psychology and circumstances that caused abused women like Gibbs to make decisions that would seem muddled even for a four-year-old faced with a decision about whether to be friends with a bully.
“You went to a lot of trouble for me. And I don’t like to appear ungrateful. That was nice, what you did.”
Nice?
“You’re concerned about my reaction?”
“Yes.”
“Does that tell you anything?” Experienced therapy patients ask questions like that one on their own, without prompting. I didn’t expect that Gibbs was even close to being able to do it.
“That I don’t like to disappoint people?” She was guessing at the answer. I had sat next to a kid in high school algebra who’d answered every question with that exact same inflection. For an entire year.
“Or… maybe… you feel the same way with me that you feel sometimes with Sterling.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You make your decisions based on fear of disappointing people, or concern about making them angry. If you’re worried about making me angry, I can only guess how concerned you might be about Sterling ’s reaction to finding out what you’ve told me, or about his discovering that you’ve left him.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” she said.
How much consideration had she given it? Less than a second. Apparently we weren’t at a point in the therapy where I was being granted any wisdom transference.
I punted. “So you’ve changed your mind?”
“Not about the murder thing. No, no. About not feeling safe at home. That’s what I changed my mind about.”
Had she just said “the murder thing”? She had.
“You no longer think your husband will be angry that you’re turning him in to the police for murder?” There is a yearlong seminar in clinical psychology graduate school on how to ask obvious questions with a straight face.
I’d aced it.
“ Sterling really loves me. I think he’d want me to stay with him while this works out.”
“Works out? And how is this going to work out?”
“I think he’ll get arrested. That will solve my problems for a while. At least about the murder thing. After that I just don’t know. With a good lawyer these days, anything is possible.”
Gibbs’s musings were at once both rational and incredibly naÏve. Although I knew what I wanted to say next, I paused through a couple of breathing cycles before I said it. I would have preferred for her to respond to the echoes of her own words, but she didn’t.
“When you started today’s session, you said that Sterling was going to kill you. Now you would like me to believe that you’re convinced that you are safe living with him even though you’re about to turn him in to the police for murdering your mutual friend?”
Her face brightened inexplicably. She blurted, “That’s so great! I think that’s almost exactly what Dr. Phil would say.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dr. Phil-you know, on the-oh, you don’t know, do you? The guy on TV?”
She could tell I was befuddled.
She quickly added, “Don’t worry, it’s notthatimportant that you know who…” Her voice trailed away.
I actually had a vague idea who Dr. Phil was. What I was befuddled about was the question of whether it was a good thing or a potentially embarrassing thing that I was beginning to sound like a psychologist who plied his trade on daytime television.
I made a mental note to ask Diane how humiliated I should be. She had her finger on the pulse of things like that.
“Yesterday,” I said, “you were frightened enough of Sterling that you asked me to solicit help for you from Safe House. Today you’ve convinced yourself that the danger isn’t real. Which am I supposed to believe?”
“ Sterling doesn’t want to hurt me.”
I thought it was an interesting statement. Wishful, but interesting.
“Can you hear your own confusion?” I asked her.
“I’m not confused. I changed my mind. People do that. People react impulsively sometimes.”
Softly, I probed, “Gibbs, has Sterling not wanting to hurt you kept him from hurting you in the past?”
She sighed, gave me a little half-smile. I took it to mean that I’d asked another Dr. Phil question.
“If he hurt me now, wouldn’t that be like proof of what he did to Louise? He wouldn’t risk that. Sterling isn’t stupid.”
“And you are willing to run that risk? You’re willing to believe that, despite his threats, despite his past behavior, despite the fact that you’re accusing him of murdering a friend of yours, he won’t hurt you now?” I allowed a tincture of incredulity to enter my voice.
“Yes, I am,” she said definitively. “I am. I don’t want to go to Safe House. I want to go back home. Will you call the police in California now? Right now? I want to get that over with.”
“Why me? Why don’t you make the call yourself, Gibbs?”
“I can’t. Betraying Sterling to you is as far as I can go. It’s been hard even going this far.”
I sat silently, urging her to say more. She didn’t. The quiet stretched over two minutes or more.
Finally, I said, “But you’ll cooperate with the police and testify about what you know?”
“If they arrest him? Yes, I’ll testify. And if the police ask to talk with me before that, I will talk with them. I already told you that. I’m trying to do the right thing, Dr. Gregory.”
I recalled Lauren’s caution about spousal immunity. I wondered if Gibbs knew what I knew on that topic, that she couldn’t testify against Sterling in California, which meant that the police would have to develop substantial evidence on their own to support her allegations.
“If the police ask to talk with you right now? While I’m on the phone?”
“No. Not right now.”
I considered the fact that I had an out. Gibbs wasn’t keeping her end of the bargain we’d made the previous morning-seeking shelter at Safe House. I concluded that her change of heart abrogated my responsibility to keep my end of the bargain-calling the homicide detective in California.
In my own heart, however, I knew that I was still inclined to make the call to California, not solely because I’d told Gibbs that I would, or because of some absurd sense of responsibility I was feeling because of a hypothetical bargain I’d made with her.
I was inclined to make the call because it was the r
ight thing to do. Why? Because of the murder thing. I could spend some unpredictable amount of time in therapy trying to influence her to make the phone call herself, but with an unsolved homicide hanging in the balance, it didn’t seem like a prudent plan.
I had received information about an unsolved murder; I was in a position to help the police close the case and put the responsible party behind bars. That was a novel state of affairs for me. But what made things even more unique in my experience was the fact that the screwy circumstances allowed me a rare ethical sanctuary: I actually had my patient’s permission to share information in my possession with the police.
That doesn’t happen very often in my business. I couldn’t think of another time it had happened in my career.
But sitting across from Gibbs, I wasn’t feeling free to act. What I was feeling was hesitant. Maybe I should have heeded the caution I was feeling right then. The caution was saying:Reconsider.
But I didn’t. Instead I stood, walked over to my desk phone, and lifted the receiver.
“I brought the number with me,” Gibbs said.
I placed the receiver back down. “I’m not as comfortable proceeding with the call as I would be if you weren’t planning to return to your home.”
Her shoulders sank a little. “ Sterling is what he is whether or not you make the call.”
“True. And I’m afraid he’s someone who may hurt you.”
“I don’t think so. He’s protective of me. I’m not saying it’s normal protectiveness, Dr. Gregory, whatever that is, but he’s protective of me.”
“Protective?”
“Yes. Very. Sterling is controlling. Very controlling. But he’s only touched me once. In anger, I mean, and that was… years ago. Many years ago. Are you going to make the call?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t.
Gibbs shifted on her chair. She sat back, crossed one leg over the other, and rested one forearm on the other. Each hand grasped the opposing biceps. “Remember I said yesterday that it wasn’t only Louise?”
“Yes.” Goose bumps shot up my spine.
She looked away from me. “You can’t tell this to the police, okay? What I’m about to tell you.”
“Actually that’s not my call to make, Gibbs. It’s yours. You decide what leaves this room.”
“Then what I tell you from now on doesn’t leave the room. You can’t tell this to Dr. Estevez or to the California police.”
“Would you like to rescind your previous release in writing?”
I immediately wondered why I’d asked her that. I couldn’t remember ever making that offer to a patient before.
She made eye contact again. “No, that’s not necessary. I trust you.”
Somehow her assurance that she trusted me wasn’t the most comforting of news. I didn’t say “okay” or “fine.” I waited silently for what was going to come next.
It turned out that Gibbs didn’t need much time to hurdle whatever obstacles she faced about continuing.
“It’s not just about Louise. I wish it were. Although I think she was the first, it’s not just about Louise. My husband has killed a number of women. All over the country.”
With false confidence I’d set down the cards of my two-pair hand, and Gibbs had trumped me with the old serial killer royal flush.
TWELVE
Good advice.
“Do not wander from designated paths and trails.” That’s what the first sign said. It was a hundred yards back, where there was still some light from the visitors’ center.
“Do not go near any water.” That order was posted ten yards farther along the trail.
Now here she was breaking all the rules. She was off the trail. She was near the water. Beneath her bare feet she could feel the muddy ground begin to turn into something that was the consistency of wet, putrefied hay. The stench was sour. In the darkness the odor screamed at her.
Gritty moisture squished up between her toes.
She bathed twice a day. Every day. Morning and night. She detested filth.
And decay? Please! Shivers shot up her spine.
The night was moonless. Her eyes found streaks to focus on, but the streaks disappeared as soon as she tried to reel them in. She couldn’t see. It was the smell, and the feel of the rotting life between her toes, that convinced her that the swamp water was near.
And there had been one more sign. It had read, “Do not smoke or litter.”
She wasn’t breaking that rule. Five minutes ago, maybe. No, it had only been two or three. She’d been breaking that rule, sitting there in the car. Smoking, yes; not littering. Fantasizing. Had everything changed so much in two minutes?
Yes. Everything had changed.
She shivered.And why am I naked?
Oh, yeah.
Sterling .
Damn Sterling.
Five minutes ago she was still loving it. Every bit of it. The headphones, the tape, the music, the voice, the whole thing. Disrobing in the car. Waiting for him there, naked. Waiting for him to…
She tried to think.
Truth? She was more frightened of the swamp than she was of the gun. She’d grown up around guns in Virginia, was a pretty good shot herself. She didn’t have the gun this time, though. It was pointed at her. That was hard to ignore.
But not as hard to ignore as the swamp.
She hated swamps and everything that lived in them. She hated snakes. She hated alligators. She hated frogs. She even hated the damn harmless dragonflies. When she was thirteen, one had become tangled in her hair at school. She’d been so frightened by the flapping that she’d pulled the hallway fire alarm to get some help.
Her friends had never let her forget it.
She told herself not to panic in the swamp. There was a way out. She had to find the way out.
The voice from the Walkman had instructed her to duct-tape her mouth.Let that awful stuff even touch her hair? Yeah, right.She’d thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. She’d done it. Now the tape across her lips limited her to whimpers.
Her wrists were bound in front of her with the same awful gray tape.The instructions had made sense at the timeis what she told herself.
What was I thinking?
On an exhale, she thought of blue herons. Herons liked swamps. She’d loved watching them on that boat tour she’d taken that time in the Everglades. She liked herons. Okay, she didn’t love them. Birds made her nervous. But she tried to imagine walking into a flock of blue herons. That would be okay. She could survive that.
She stopped.
Behind her the voice said, “Keep going.” It was a hoarse whisper. The same strange voice that was on the Walkman. “Don’t turn.”
The voice said keep going. She kept going.
Her next step took her ankle-deep into the dank water. Two more steps, and her kneecaps sank below the surface.
She’d lived in Augusta for four years. During that time she’d never visited the Phinizy Swamp Nature Park. Not once. She hated swamps. A girlfriend had once said something about there being bobcats out here.
Bobcats? She shivered.
She preferred golf courses. That was all the nature she needed: the back nine at Augusta, across town. Midnight on the thirteenth green again? She didn’t need to be a member for that round, did she? That night was… perfection.
She had no idea what was spread out in front of her. A pond-size swamp? An Everglades-size swamp? Are swamps deep? Shallow?
She heard a splash, then realized that she had made the noise herself. How far behind her was the gun? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t wait. She had to move. She decided to run. In her head she flipped a coin. Tails.
She would run right.
Before her first step, she heard another splash. She knew she hadn’t made that one. She screamed into her gag.
“Keep going.” The gun hadn’t moved with her. “Don’t turn.” The gun was farther away, back a few steps. The odds saidnow.
Now!
She
lifted her knees high and sprinted to her right, hoping, praying that her next few steps wouldn’t be her last few steps.
She splashed. Can’t run in knee-deep water without splashing.
Please don’t shoot, please don’t shoot.
She thought she spotted the glooming outline of a tree. Someplace to hide. Something to provide cover. How far away was it?
She heard more splashing. Her own? She didn’t know. She tripped on something solid below the surface of the swamp and slipped right down as though she’d been slapped. Muck seeped into her nose and ears. She tasted decay as she tried to scream, “I’m sorry, Daddy,” but despite the tape her mouth was full of the effluent of the Phinizy Swamp.
Have to get up.She tried to stand.
She felt a tug on her thigh.
It was insistent. And then it was crushing.
Suddenly, she was swimming backward involuntarily. Her last thought wasI hate alligators.
THIRTEEN
“A serial killer?”
“I don’t want to say any more than what I said, Dr. Gregory. I just needed you to realize what is at stake here.”
“ Sterling has killed women all over the country?”
“Yes. Please call the police. He needs to be behind bars. We can’t wait.”
We?
I digested the implications.
“Is anyone else in danger?” If Gibbs identified a future potential victim, it would launch me into a gray stratosphere where I might be required to breach her confidentiality.
“Not that I know of,” she said.
Silently I counted to five. I spent the seconds trying to decide whether or not I believed her.
FOURTEEN
I had only fifteen minutes to begin to digest what I’d just learned.
The lunchtime appointment that followed my Tuesday morning session with Gibbs belonged to a member of the local bar. Jim Zebid was a defense attorney, a litigator who also did occasional plaintiff’s work on malpractice claims. He had an interesting background, having been around the Boulder County criminal justice system working as a private investigator while putting himself through law school.
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